God is not human that He should lie, not a human being, that He should change His mind.  Does He speak and then not act?  Does He promise and not fulfill?  Numbers  23:19  NIV

I keep my eyes always on the Lord.  With Him at my right hand, I will not be shaken.  Psalm 16:8  NIV

“Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.”  Matthew 25:46  NIV

When you read my title, you probably thought about the song, Always and Forever, which was recorded by Heatwave in 1976 and released in 1977.  Now some of you are sitting there scratching your head wondering what I am talking about because that song was way before your time.  Certain things that we say or do can show our age or give others a clue as to what era we come from.  When that song was released,  I was 12 years old.  We know that the times are constantly changing.  The music changes, the styles of clothing changes.  Hair styles change.  The style of cars changes.

Other things can change as well.  Our feelings and our emotions can change.  Divorces happen because people change.  Friendships dissolve because feelings change.  Families are torn apart because emotions get into the way and people change.  I don’t know about you, but I crave consistency.  If you are my friend today, then I hope that you are my friend tomorrow and ten years from now.  If  you don’t like me today, that’s ok, but I hope that you don’t like me  tomorrow just because you need something from me.  So, you see where I am going with this, right?  Be consistent.

I guess this is the reason that I love to read the Bible and I love being in close relationship with God.  There are 66 books of the Bible.  All were written by different authors inspired by God. They were written from the beginning of time and cover a span of thousands of years with the book of Revelation telling us what will happen when Christ returns.   They are consistent.  There are no contradictions in the Bible.  God’s word is consistent.  God is consistent.  He loves us yesterday, today, and tomorrow.  He wants us to want to enter into a close, personal relationship with Him, but gives us free will to choose.  He never lies to us.  He never changes His mind.  He always fulfills His promises.   Now, if only human beings could conduct their relationships in the same way.  Wouldn’t it be great if you knew that you could count on a mere mortal like you can count on God.  Even if we promise to do something for someone and have the best of intentions, we can still be stopped by unforeseen circumstances.  Why?  Because we are human.  In many relationships, emotions and feelings get the best of us, or the other person, and the relationship is destroyed.  Marriages are destroyed because a spouse cannot say no to temptation.  They are destroyed because feelings change.  We’ve all known of situations or perhaps been in situations where someone professes their undying love for someone and then within a matter of time, they suddenly just don’t love that person anymore.  How does that happen?

Where most relationships go awry is that they don’t begin with Jesus.  Some of the best relationships that I have with friends now are friends that share a devotion to Christ.  When I rededicated my life to Christ, some of my friends looked at me like I had three heads.  Some of my friends realized that they too needed to do the same thing.  I have lost some friends.  I mean they haven’t written me off entirely, but they seem to be concerned about the whole Jesus thing and want to watch from a safe distance.  But, I have gained so much.  Even with the friends that I had that decided to rededicate their lives as well, it has enriched our friendships.  We have connected on a much higher level.  And best of all, there is consistency with my “Jesus Girl” friends.  We are putting God first and He is taking care of everything else  (Matthew 6:33).    Like our second scripture passage for today from Psalm 16:8 tells us , if we focus on God we will not be shaken.  We too can be consistent.  We are called to be imitators of Christ (Ephesians 5:1).  So how can we imitate Christ if we are inconsistent and allow our feelings and our emotions to run things?

So always is a concept that often times we are not familiar with because of consistency in relationships, but forever is a concept that is really hard to wrap your head around.  We live in a fast paced world.  If we have to sit in a fast food drive through for more 2 minutes, we say things like, “wow, I’ve been in this line forever”.    My biggie is the doctor’s office.  If I am not in and out of there in 30-45 minutes, I feel like I have been there forever.  Especially when they stick you in that little room waiting for the doctor.  I go stir crazy in there.  We are used to things constantly changing.  If you don’t like something you move on to something else.  We live by the old saying, “Nothing lasts forever”.  But that’s really not true.  You see once this body of ours gives out, our soul will go somewhere forever.  The righteous will be rewarded for eternity and the unrighteous will face eternal punishment.  That’s forever rewards or forever punishment, depending on how you have lived your life.

Always is hard to do because it means that we are the same always.  It means that people around us can count on us to be truthful and to keep our promises, just as we can count on God to be faithful and to keep His promises.

Forever is forever,  meaning never ending, for eternity into infinity.  There is no end to our life after death.  We will either spend eternity in heaven or hell.  God gives us free will so that we can choose our eternal destiny.  None of us know when we will begin our eternal life.  You need to decide where you want to be for eternity.  You must determine  where you want to spend your forever life.  I hope you choose heaven, I would love to see you there.

Have a great day!